The career of Congresswoman Katherine Gudger Langley
illustrates a highly unusual route to Congress. Her husband,
John Wesley Langley, resigned his House seat after being
convicted of violating Prohibition laws. Katherine Langley
then defeated her husband’s successor and won election
to the House in a “vindication campaign” designed to
exonerate her disgraced spouse.
Katherine Gudger was born near Marshall, North
Carolina, on February 14, 1888, to James Madison Gudger
and Katherine Hawkins.1 Gudger graduated in 1901 from
the Woman’s College in Richmond, Virginia, and went on
briefly to Emerson College of Oratory in Boston. A short
teaching job in speech in Tennessee ended when she left for
Washington, DC, in 1904 to become her father’s secretary
when he was elected U.S. Representative from North
Carolina on the Democratic ticket. That same year she met
and later married John Langley, a former state legislator and
attorney working for the Census Bureau. The couple settled
in Pikeville, Kentucky, where John Langley successfully
ran as a Republican for the House of Representatives in
1906. He eventually won re-election nine times in a safely
Republican district that was an old unionist stronghold in
eastern Kentucky.
Katherine Langley was well known in Washington society
and on Capitol Hill, working as her husband’s secretary and
administrative assistant. From 1919 to 1925 she was clerk
to the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds while
John Langley was chairman. At the same time, Katherine
Langley also was an active member in party politics, serving
as the first woman member of the state central committee
and founder of the Women’s Republican State Committee.
She served as a delegate to the Republican National
Convention in 1924.2
Katherine Langley claimed her husband’s seat in the
House of Representatives under very unusual circumstances.
“Pork Barrel John” Langley was convicted of “conspiracy
to violate the Prohibition Act” by trying to sell 1,400
bottles of whiskey.3 He won re-election in 1924 while his
conviction was being appealed. When the U.S. Supreme
Court refused to overturn the decision, he resigned from
the 69th Congress (1925–1927) on January 11, 1926, and
was sentenced to the federal penitentiary in Atlanta for
two years. “They believe he was the victim of a political
conspiracy,” reported the Lexington Leader of the district’s
reaction. The disaffection of Republicans in eastern
Kentucky over the lack of effort by Senator Richard Pretlow Ernst to defend John Langley contributed to Ernst’s re-election
defeat in 1926 to Alben William Barkley.4 Langley’s
district manifested a persistent sense that Kentuckians were
“drinking wet and voting dry.”5 On February 13, 1926,
Republican Andrew J. Kirk succeeded Congressman Langley
in a special election to fill out the remainder of his term in
the 69th Congress.
Katherine Langley resolved to clear her husband’s name
by running for his seat in the 70th Congress (1927–1929).
With John Langley’s active help from prison, his wife
defeated Kirk in the Republican primary. Langley asked
voters to “send my wife, the mother of our three children,
to Washington” because “she knows better than anyone
else my unfinished plans.”6 Katherine Langley was active
on the stump, drawing upon her experience as a speech
teacher. She impressed voters with her efforts. “John
Langley wears the breeches,” one voter commented, “but
the lady has the brains.”7 Basking in the glow of her primary
victory, she announced that her win proved her fitness
for office and vindicated her husband. That fall she won
election to the House with 58 percent of the vote.8 A little
more than a month later, on December 18, 1926, John
Langley was paroled from the Atlanta Penitentiary, having
served 11 months of his sentence.9 Katherine Langley’s
re-election in 1928 with 56 percent of the vote was more
than respectable.10
John Langley’s conviction and resignation in disgrace left
his wife socially ostracized in the conservative Washington
social scene. Capital elite did not approve when Langley
extended her family’s practice of patronage within the
congressional office by hiring her married daughter as her
secretary.11 Observers were quick to notice that the former
speech teacher followed a more archaic rhetorical style than
was favored at the time. “She came from the ‘heart of the
hills,’” writes Hope Chamberlin. “Coal, ‘king of energy,’ was
dug by ‘stalwart and sturdy miners.’” Sometimes given to
verse, she described the Kentucky mountaineer as “‘a man
whose grip is a little tighter, whose smile is a little brighter,
whose faith is a little whiter.’”12 Her reputation grew when
she interrupted a debate on tax legislation to praise a
Kentucky basketball team.13 Her committee assignments
were not particularly powerful. She was appointed to the
Committee on Claims, the Committee on Immigration and
Naturalization, and the Committee on Invalid Pensions.
In the 71st Congress (1929–1931) she also served on the
Committee on Education.
In early 1930 Langley achieved an important first. She
became the first woman Member to serve on the Republican
Committee on Committees, succeeding John Marshall
Robsion when he was appointed as U.S. Senator.14 As a
member of the Committee on Committees, Langley served
on the body that assigned Republican Members to the
standing committees. The Republican Conference specified
that each state delegation with a party member would have
a seat on the committee. The state’s representative on the
committee would have a vote equivalent to the size of the
state’s Republican delegation. Furthermore, each state party
caucus would select its committee representative.15 Langley’s
achievement is cast in a different light as a result. She was
the most senior member of the Kentucky Republican caucus
after Robsion left, and her appointment came after the
committee assignments were made for the 71st Congress. To
take full advantage of this position of influence, she would
need to win re-election.
Throughout her House career, Langley continued
her efforts to vindicate her husband. She succeeded in
convincing President Calvin Coolidge to grant John Langley
a pardon. It was issued on December 20, 1928, shortly after
Katherine Langley had won her second term. The pardon
apparently included an informal proviso that John Langley
never run for public office again. Nevertheless, during the
holidays in late 1928, he circulated a Christmas message to
her constituents.16 A week later, John Langley declared his
intention to seek his House seat again, denying that any
condition had been set for his clemency. Katherine Langley
issued a statement in Washington that she would not step
aside “for John or anyone else,” and all talk of John Langley
running for his old seat died away.17
The election of 1928, with Governor Al Smith of New
York, a Catholic and an opponent of Prohibition, running
as the Democratic presidential nominee, was devastating
to the Democratic Party in Kentucky. Of 11 congressional
districts where only two typically went Republican, all but
two were lost by the Democrats in 1928. Without Smith
at the head of the ticket, Kentucky Democrats expected
to do much better in 1930. The continuing impact of
the Great Depression hurt Republican congressional
candidates, however, especially those from traditionally
Republican districts. In those districts the longtime
agricultural depression combined with the depressed
coal industry to turn the voters against the Republican
administration of President Herbert Hoover. Under these circumstances, Katherine Langley took her time to come to a decision about running for another term in the
House. In late February 1930, she announced her plans
for re-election.18 In the August primary, Langley faced
two opponents.19 By the fall of 1930, she faced a growing
Democratic tide at the polls, and some observers had placed
her on the list of vulnerable incumbents.20 She narrowly lost
to Andrew Jackson May, a Democrat, in her bid for a third
term, gaining only 47 percent of the vote.21 Later the New
York Times would characterize the 1930 Republican losses
in Kentucky as “one of the biggest political form reversals of
its history.”22
Congresswoman Langley retired to Pikeville, Kentucky,
where John Langley had earlier resumed his law practice.
John Langley died in January 1932 of pneumonia, still
arguing that he had been sent to prison unjustly.23 Katherine
Langley served as a postmaster and was twice elected as
a district railroad commissioner. She died in Pikeville,
Kentucky, on August 15, 1948.24
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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